I once knew a feller, a travelling mate, not bad as
fellers go,
He was happiest when he was miserable if ever that
could be so,
He'd wake up every mornin' with the world upon his
back,
And so for the want of a better name we called him
Happy Jack.
If ever you travelled on outback tracks as most us
sometimes do,
With anxious eyes on the petrol gauge in the hope it
would see you through,
You're a 100 miles from nowhere and eighty still to go,
You'll hear his voice like the crack of doom "The
petrol's gettin'low",
And when you're out on the Black Soul flats and you
know what some rain can do,
You hope for the best as you head for the west, then
you whisper a prayer or two,
And just when you're halfway over and starting to
breath again,
You say with sigh and a mournful eye "I think we're in
for rain."
And when on a long and lonely run with nothing in
between,
The town you left is away in the past the next one a
distant dream,
He'll prick up his ears and listen and then in accents
low,
"I don't like the noise she's makin' boss, the diff's
about to go."
When you've bumped over corrugations, so deep you could
bury a cow,
You say to yourself "It's pretty bad but the worst must
be over now."
Then he'll look at you with a woeful look and furrows
on his brow,
The last fifty miles on the road they say is "the worst
in Australia now."
Oh I wonder where he is today, this travelling mate I
had,
Where ever he is it's safe to say "That things are
really bad.
If it's not the diff it's something else or the
petrol's gettin' low."
It's pounds to peanuts and that's a bet, something's
about to go.
